


loyalty, honour and a willing heart

by rain_sleet_snow



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Brother-Sister Relationships, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Family, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Pre-Canon, Uncle-Nephew Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-10
Updated: 2015-08-10
Packaged: 2018-04-13 23:30:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4541622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Dís's husband dies, Thorin steps in to help his sister care for her sons.</p>
            </blockquote>





	loyalty, honour and a willing heart

**Author's Note:**

> Written for my friend Stella's birthday. Belated happy birthday, hon? You did ask for something exploring the relationship between Kíli, Fíli and Thorin, so I reckon the angst more or less comes as standard. :P 
> 
> With thanks to fredbassett for the excellent beta. I'm not sure where I got the idea of Víli as a name for Dís's deceased husband; it feels 'right', but it's definitely not original to me, so h/t to whoever came up with that one.

            Once, Kíli called Thorin his father, but only once. Kíli was a bright soul, affectionate and open and laughing, always laughing, but he was quick to read those about him and respond, even if he didn't always read them correctly or respond appropriately. Nobody could mistake the heavy silence that fell in the wake of his careless, loving greeting for anything other than shock.

 

            Fíli was old enough to remember his father, and stared at his toes, too silenced to correct his brother. Thorin, exhausted by the long journey he had just returned from, the suspicious stares of Men and the wearying calculations of stores and food and money, looked to his sister for guidance. And Dís, who had not flinched since the day Erebor had fallen to the dragon, covered her face with her hands and faltered.

 

            Dwalin, blessed Dwalin, coughed and ruffled Kíli’s unkempt hair. “Not quite, Kíli, lad. That’s your Uncle Thorin.”

 

            “Oh,” Kíli said, unabashed. “Oops!” and flung himself at Thorin. Fortunately, Thorin had the common sense to catch him.

 

            “Dís, my lass,” Balin said smoothly, as Thorin wrangled with an armful of young dwarf and Fíli leant against Thorin’s leg, tugging on his gabardine and saying repeatedly ‘Uncle Thorin – Uncle _Tho_ rin – Uncle _Thorin_ , I want to _tell you_ –’ “I don’t suppose we could trouble you for a bowl of stew? I bought a fresh loaf from the bakery on our way in. And you’ll be wanting to hear the latest news; there’s a letter for you from your Cousin Dáin.”

 

            “Not for Thorin?” Dís asked, removing her head from her hands at last. Her eyes were as blue as Thorin’s own, and the slight redness around them only made them seem more so; but her face was perfectly controlled and composed, though it shivered when Fíli sneaked her a glance and then transferred his attention from his unresponsive uncle to his mother. She smoothed a hand over Fíli’s neat gold braids – she must have been in the middle of tidying their hair when Thorin, Dwalin and Balin returned – and looked Balin calmly in the eye. “And of course you may have some stew, Balin, I was about to sit down to dinner myself. When I’ve put these horrors to bed.”

 

            “Allow us to lend you a hand there,” Balin suggested, and glanced over his shoulder at Thorin, who had turned Kíli upside-down by the ankles, much to the detriment of the boy’s hair. Kíli was giggling wildly, and Thorin had cracked a smile. “As for Dáin Ironfoot, like most dwarves deserving of the name, he knows who keeps the Blue Mountains running.”

 

            Dís cracked a smile not dissimilar to her brother’s.

 

            “I can braid Kíli’s hair,” Fíli volunteered, his face as solemn as the moon.

 

            Dís looked down at Fíli, her hand now resting on the soft worn flannel of his nightshirt where it covered one shoulder, and arched an eyebrow. “Can you?” she enquired. “Keeping the plaits straight and tidy? And will your brother sit still, do you think?”

 

            Fíli screwed up his face. “If I give him some honeycomb he’ll sit still.”

 

            A rapid mental calculation involving both brothers’ natural tendency towards stickiness, Fíli’s wonky braiding, and the amount of grief this arrangement could save her passed across Dís’s face. At length she nodded. “Tell your brother that Mama said if he sits still for your braiding you may both come back and have a spoonful of honeycomb,” she told Fíli.

 

            “And will Uncle Thorin tell us a story?” Kíli demanded, since his hearing was always best when you least wanted it to be.

 

            “Tomorrow,” Thorin said firmly, as grateful as the other adults that Kíli hadn’t called him Da again. He flipped his nephew the right way up, and ushered him in the general direction of the boys’ small sleeping-room.

 

            Kíli made a mad break for the honeycomb jar. Dwalin seized him, flung him over one shoulder and made purposefully for the sleeping-room.

 

            Dís turned a laugh into a sneeze, and patted Fíli on the back. “Go with your brother,” she said. “Good luck.”

 

            Fíli hugged her tightly around the waist and trotted after Dwalin, who now appeared to be swaddling Kíli in blankets. Thorin looked away.

 

            “He has a strong sense of duty, that boy,” Balin remarked, watching the trio go from his seat at the table.

 

            Dís sat down, and reached for her embroidery basket, as if by habit. “Overdeveloped – not unlike someone else we know.”

 

            “I heard that,” Thorin said, decanting stew from the pot into bowls.

 

            “Stir it first, you idiot,” Dís said, without missing a beat, and drew the needle from her latest piece of embroidery, pulling her work basket towards her with a scraping noise. Thorin had already peered into it, assessing colours and fabrics, prices and the outline of the pattern emerging. It wasn't plain mending, which was never in short supply in the Blue Mountains but made Dís less of a profit, and the thread was good cotton dyed brightly in expensive blue. Dís and the boys were not in straitened circumstances, then.

 

             “I’m sorry,” Thorin said, correcting himself.

 

            “It’s stew. It’s _my_ stew. Nothing you can do to it is going to make it any worse than it already is.”

 

            “I meant about what Kíli said.”

 

            There was a pause.

 

            “He’s young,” Dís said, eventually. “It isn’t his fault. Or yours.”

 

            Tactfully, Balin said nothing. A chorus of delighted terror from the boys’ sleeping room indicated that Dwalin was telling a scary story; Thorin only hoped that he was also addressing the birds’ nest masquerading as Kíli’s hair.

 

            “Still,” Thorin said, very quiet and very low.

 

            “You’ve been as good as a father to them,” Dís said, and the steel in her voice was as true as any that ever came from Erebor’s forges.

 

            She would have made a fine queen, Thorin thought, accepting her judgement as he sloshed the newly-stirred stew into bowls. And then he looked at the account books lined up against the walls, the pile of professionally mended warm sturdy clothes for which Dís would never charge market price, the tomes of law that she kept and referred to whenever one of them was called on to settle a minor dispute as a magistrate or bring a major one before the Council, and he corrected himself. He had met enough dwarven queens and princesses and high-born ladies to know that Dís could stand proudly among the finest of them, Dís in her patched kirtle and coarse shawl, with a widow’s mourning marks on her hands and the scars of needle and thread on her fingers.

 

            Still. She had suffered and he had failed her.

 

            “I only wish I could have kept their true father alive, for their sakes,” Thorin said, setting down the four steaming bowls with rather less grace than one might have wished. “And more than that. For yours.”

 

            Dís’s eyes stayed dry. “You were a long way away when it happened.”

 

            Thorin’s eyes burned, the same way they did at every injustice and mischance and failure. “Aye. I know.”

 

            Dwalin drew the curtain closed over the boys’ sleeping room and dusted off his hands. “Never known anyone like a Durin for getting miserable over their dinner,” he remarked.

 

            Predictably, both Dís and Thorin bristled. Balin coughed hastily. “Perhaps you could do us all a favour, Dwalin-lad,” he suggested, “and pass me the bread. It’s in the top of that bundle. Yes. Now, Dís, tell me. How is business, these days?”

 

***

 

            The day Víli died, Thorin was indeed a long way from the Blue Mountains. As it happened, he was arguing with a hobbit, which was – later in life – to become something of a habit. In neither case was he ever particularly likely to win.

 

            “I’m telling you,” said the hobbit patiently, “the Barrows are dangerous.”

 

            Dwalin let out a rumbling snort. “Oh, aye? Dangerous to the minds of you and your kin, maybe. Hobbits – soft.”

 

            The hobbit got a curious glint in his eye, which Thorin viewed with unaccustomed caution. It was true that the hobbit was taller than any Thorin had ever seen, though he was as rotund as his fellows, and he looked stronger, and perhaps a little hardier. And there was undoubtedly something _funny_ about him, here under the eaves of the Old Forest in the middle of winter, snow on the ground and his bare feet standing casually among it.

 

            “Master Hobbit,” Thorin said, treading on Dwalin’s iron-clad toes to no effect, “we asked for directions to the Barrows. Not advice.”

 

            “I know, but advice is what you’re getting. And it’s Took – Bandobras Took – not Master Hobbit.” Mr Took fished out a pouch and a pipe from his pockets, and began to tamp pipeweed into the pipe’s bowl.

 

            “Is that relevant?” Thorin demanded. The Forest’s edge yawned over them, and it was beginning to get to him. Give him the honest darkness of stone overhead, not these shifting, creeping, malevolent trees. He cast them a quick glare. Fit for nothing but kindling, all of them.

 

            “No, it’s an introduction. Bandobras Took, at your service. Don’t suppose you’ve got a light?”

 

            “No,” Dwalin snapped.

 

            “You haven’t got any manners, either.” Bandobras Took made a sustained search of his pockets, and retrieved a flint fire-starter, which he worked until the pipe caught, with a tiny lick of flame.

 

            The trees _hissed_ , and the shadows lengthened. Thorin controlled himself with an effort; Dwalin twitched, took a firmer hold of his axe, and said something unrepeatable in Khuzdul.

 

            “They don’t like fire,” Bandobras said around his pipe. “They don’t like axes. They lead good dwarves like you astray. The Brandybucks – kin of mine – some of them know this place. They’ve been in a time or two. Most of them come out again. I’ve been in and out. The Rangers will go there, if they must, but Brandybucks guide ’em – most of them. But it’s not a place to tread lightly, and the Barrows, ah, the Barrows are worse. Have you got wives, either of you? Children?”

 

            “No,” Dwalin rumbled, for the second time.

 

            “I have a sister,” Thorin said, with as much dignity as possible. He thought of Víli, fighting an uphill battle to provide for his wife and his sons, and still keep smiling in that way that kept light in Dís’s eyes. He thought of the piles of work that Dís had taken on, the roughness of her fingertips, the strain on her face, and how nothing either Víli or Dís did was quite enough, not right now; and he thought of the jewels and precious metals lying unattended but for pitiful curses, which could buy the weight off his sister’s shoulders, food onto his nephews’ plates. “She has two young sons. My nephews. My kinsman and I do not… tread lightly, as you put it.”

 

            Bandobras Took nodded, and puffed on his pipe. “I’m sure they’re fine lads, and they’ll grow to be fine dwarves. Better if they had their uncle alive to help them.”

 

            “One miserable Barrow-wight is no threat to us.”

 

            “That’s all you know. Have you ever met a Barrow-wight, Thorin son of Thráin? Or Dwalin son of Fundin, for that matter?”  


            In seconds, they had him pinned against a tree trunk, steel blades threatening his soft skin under his heavy wool coat. But those greenish eyes never lost their glitter, and the tan skin never paled. In fact, the lines around his eyes crinkled deeper, as if he was amused.

 

            “How do you know those names?” Thorin rasped. It was not well, that a strange hobbit should recognise them so easily – not well, in a world where an heir of Durin was still a prize to the wrong kind of people.

 

            “Easy,” Bandobras Took said. “I talked to the Rangers. They said there was a grumpy one who walked like a lord and an even grumpier one who scowled like a storm, and the former was Thorin son of Thráin, and the latter Dwalin son of Fundin.”

 

            Thorin blinked.

 

            “The description of the tattoos helped,” Bandobras Took added. “And if you don’t want to be recognised, Thorin Oakenshield, you shouldn’t go around carrying a bloody _oaken shield_ , now should you. Let me go, before my pipe goes out.”

 

            Thorin took a step back. “Release him, Dwalin.”

 

            Dwalin complied, grudgingly. “You’ve offered us no solutions, Master Hob –”

 

            “ _Took_.”

 

            “ _Hobbit_. We need the money. We will deal with the Barrow-wights.”

 

            “Except you don’t need money, do you?” Bandobras Took said. “You need warm clothing. You need food. I came here for a reason, my fine lads, and it wasn’t to tell two warriors far better equipped than I things that they ought to have learned with their mother’s milk. Any child of twenty knows better than to seek the Barrows out. Any tween of thirty-five has far more sense! We hobbits, we don’t deal in ready money much, or in precious metals, in jewels beyond little things. You’d call them trinkets.”  


            “We would,” Thorin said, unable to stop himself.

 

            Bandobras’ eyes flashed. “But they’re ours. You keep your jewels, and we’ll keep the better farmland. We’re not as cold as you are, up in the mountains, and we’ve had more years of prosperity. So here’s a deal for you. There’s honest work to be done in the Shire, smithing in plenty, and you’ll be paid in food for those nephews of yours. Warm blankets, so your sister sleeps comfortably at night. Good, solid things. They’ll keep you alive.” He blew a smoke ring. “But of course, they’re not as exciting.”

 

            _Exciting_ , indeed. Thorin crushed his displeasure; the rest of the hobbit's words had been promising.

 

            “I’m no smith,” Dwalin pointed out.

 

            Bandobras squinted. “You’re a dwarf.”

 

            “I’m still no smith.”

 

            “Can you use that axe to cleave trees as well as heads?” Bandobras enquired. The trees whispered, and Bandobras made a gesture that was unquestionably rude, and bore more resemblance to Easterling hand-signs than any hobbit gesture Thorin knew.

 

            Dwalin nodded suspiciously.

 

            “Well.” Bandobras spread his hands. “Who isn’t in want of wood for the fire, in this weather?”

 

            Dwalin grunted, but it was not a disapproving grunt.

 

            “Come with me,” Bandobras said. “I’ll see you right for a meal and a night’s sleep at Brandy Hall – they won’t mind me, known me far too long, and besides, the Master of the Hall is a friend of mine. And in the morning, you can decide what you want to do.”

 

            Thorin had already decided. He could see the grin on Fíli’s face, if he brought home a round of good cheese; Kíli, sneaking winter apples, Dís, carving slices of ham as if it were the finest venison. Hobbits had many faults, but their taste in victuals wasn’t one of them. And the lads were growing like weeds, too - there was no more fabric in Fíli’s tunics to be let out, and Dís had purposely made them too big with enormous deep hems and seams two years ago when the Blue Mountains was comparatively flush and Glóin’s sweetheart was commissioning a bridal dress embroidered in silken thread.

 

            “Aye,” Dwalin said, and nudged Thorin. “Come on.”

 

            Thorin followed Dwalin and the fearless Mr Took down the path, away from the Forest and into the Shire proper.

 

            “You should cut back those trees,” Dwalin was saying.

 

            “Funny you should come out with that. I’ve been saying it for years. I’ll swear they’re advancing – there was a good quarter-mile more land there when I was a lad.”

 

               “Burn them back,” Dwalin said, raising his voice. “I’d be happy to lend a hand, if you know what I mean.”

 

            “I do, Mr Fundinson, I do.”

 

            “Fundinul,” Dwalin corrected, almost politely, and Thorin thought of a small flagon of good red wine for Balin, and smiled.

 

***

 

            “I won’t marry again, Thorin. I can’t.”

 

            It had been two years since Thorin's argument with Bandobras Took. Two years since returning to the Blue Mountains and the comfortable home Dís and Víli's skills and persistence had won to find the door draped in black, Fíli wide-eyed, subdued and struggling, Kíli hardly more than an infant and deeply confused, and Dís starving thin with misery because the only thing she couldn't force herself to do was care for herself. Two years since a hunting accident had claimed one of the best dwarves Thorin knew, mere weeks before Thorin returned with enough food that Víli would not have had to attempt a hunting expedition in risky conditions. Two years which had been the longest of Thorin's life, longer even that the first weeks after the fall of Erebor, which had stretched into endlessness - but at least then Thorin had not been _alone_ , the only Durin of the immediate royal line left. He could not demand support from his grieving sister.

 

            Two years constituted the end of Dís's period of deep mourning, too, and the proposals were rolling in. Thorin considered the possibilities of duelling the claimants, partly for the way they made his sister's mouth go tight and her knuckles whiten, and partly for the way they treated his nephews: obsequious, or patronising, or dismissive. Although Dís had removed herself from the line of succession to marry Víli, and her decision stood, Thorin had spoken to Balin and knew that there was nothing in law to prevent her being reinstated now that Víli was dead and their union dissolved, especially since her sons were Thorin's heirs, and Thorin himself was unwed. He would place any bet that most, if not all, of Dís's suitors had their eyes on her claim to the seat of kings at Erebor, and any power or prestige it might bring with it. If they didn't think to claim the throne, should it ever be retaken - the space between Thorin's heart and his ribs burned - they thought to use her influence, or to control Fíli and Kíli when they came of age. It was useless to point out to them that Dís's influence and power might stand in the shadow of her ancestry, but if Dís had no strength of her own her influence would be _only_ a shadow.  It was not useless to point out to them that her sons hated them all. Fíli was very polite, for a dwarf of his age; he was coldly rude to every suitor who stepped through the door. Kíli, somewhat less subtle and rather younger, had bitten two of them; Dís said he took after Thorin.

 

            But, of course, the suitors cared only a little about Dís's feelings, and even less about the boys'.

 

            "There is not an honest dwarf among them," Dís said harshly, as if she suspected Thorin of disagreeing.

 

            "No," Thorin said, startled out of his reverie. "No. I like none of them. I would not -”

 

            "Exactly," Dís said, cutting him off with a certain finality. Thorin closed his mouth and watched her carefully.

 

            "Where are the boys?" he asked, after a moment. Dís had made tea when he came in, hot and strong and sweet to revive a traveller; it was going cold in front of him.

 

            "At lessons, with Balin." Dís's fingers played over the handle of her embroidery basket. Thorin noticed the tunic in half-mourning colours, the embroidered patterns of bereavement half-finished, cloth carefully folded and stuffed into the top where there wasn't quite room on top of Dís's other work, the paid work from other dwarves. There was a funny, lighter patch on one side where it looked as if Dís had dyed the fabric carelessly; very unlike her. He wondered what it used to be.

 

            "Fíli learns quickly," Dís added. "You would be proud of his facility with history. He behaves himself - mostly." She heaved an imperceptible sigh. "Kíli..."

 

            " _Mahal_ ," Thorin said, contemplating Kíli, that over-enthusiastic soul, wedged into a classroom.

 

            Dís's mouth twitched. "Balin thinks they need... A father figure."

 

            Thorin stared at Dís.

 

            "Or at least he said so," Dís elaborated, absently neatening a braid that had come loose - a braid for her craft, Thorin noted automatically, reading the patterns in Dís's hairstyle. The braids that marked her out as a widow and the mother of two sons were immaculate. "He suggested that re-marrying would be of personal benefit to me as well as political benefit for the ci- former citizens of Erebor."

 

            Thorin got to his feet. " _Right_. I'll -"

 

            "You'll do nothing," Dís said sharply. "I've already spoken to him. He won't be repeating that suggestion."

 

            Thorin subsided into his seat again. "Fíli and Kíli are good lads. They're a credit to you, and to Víli."

 

            Dís's mouth twitched again. "Well - mostly, perhaps."

 

            Thorin remembered about the tea his sister had made him and sipped at it, and made an involuntary face. It was stone-cold.

 

            Dís snorted at him and shook her head; and then, after a silent moment, took up the conversation again. "There's no denying they're a handful. But they listen to me, provided I know to tell them not to do something. Kíli's mischief passes all logic, sometimes. And Fíli will follow after him because he can't let Kíli get in trouble, now can he, Mam?"

 

            Her imitation of Fíli was uncannily accurate. Thorin snorted, much as she had a few moments earlier. "Maybe another pair of hands would be helpful," he said, "to drag them backwards out of trouble," and he remembered a wintry afternoon two years ago, a hobbit with sharp eyes who couldn't have known the truth of what he was saying. _I’m sure they’re fine lads, and they’ll grow to be fine dwarves... Better if they had their uncle alive to help them_. "Maybe I could stay in the Blue Mountains for longer. I see too little of them."

 

            Dís's shoulders relaxed imperceptibly.

 

***

 

            Thorin had seldom considered it his province to actively discipline his nephews, unless Dís indicated that he should. They usually fell in line when he glowered at them, particularly Fíli, who was keen to learn everything Thorin offered to teach him, especially the half-recalled lessons about ruling that Thrór and Thráin had passed to Thorin, and the deeply ingrained understanding of leadership Thorin had developed since the Fall of the Lonely Mountain. Where glowering failed to subdue him, an ominous reference to duties and responsibilities usually sufficed. Kíli, younger and less conscious of duty, simply enjoyed Thorin's company, and Thorin found that the most effective way to dissuade him from mischief was mentioning how much trouble the mischief would give Dís. Still, they were by and large well-behaved - or at least, not badly behaved in a way that came to Thorin's attention; Balin and Dwalin, for instance, were more than capable of dealing with any misbehaviour during the lads' lessons - and Thorin seldom found himself disciplining them.

 

            Then again, Thorin reflected, there was a first time for everything. He'd never previously had the boys brought to him, sullen and bruised, by a very much unreformed thief who Dwalin had picked up for stealing. Dís, sitting in judgement, had made the thief pay the fine out by working as a laundryman, and for some reason, Nori had been grateful. He had done several odd jobs for Dís when Thorin was away, and had refused payment.

 

            None of this explained why the boys were in Nori's custody. Thorin tried to think of something to say that implied that his goggle-eyed stare was outraged rather than merely stunned.

 

            "You're dripping," he said to Fíli, as crushingly as possible. Fíli flushed a dull, shamed red, and automatically put his sleeve up to his bruised, swollen and - yes - dripping nose.

 

            " _Handkerchief_ ," Thorin added, with the sternness of someone who had spent the last three decades living almost full-time with a seamstress and her rowdy sons, and therefore understood exactly how difficult it was to get blood out of cloth. Dís made her sons' clothes from plain, solid material, the only decoration the Durin family patterns she preserved in books that had once been their mother's and were still charred at the edges. But if Thorin had heard one homily on the subject of bloodstains on clothes, he'd heard a hundred.

 

            Fíli went an even brighter red, and Nori produced a handkerchief from nowhere. It looked as if it had been well-used, if not for its intended purpose - grease stains were the least of it - and Fíli eyed it dubiously for a second before recovering the courtesies that Dís and Balin had drummed into him, mustering up a polite thank-you, and accepting the handkerchief.

 

            "The lads did well," Nori said in an explanatory tone. "But six against two isn't good odds."

 

            Thorin felt a headache coming on, despite the fact that he'd got through the morass of financial paperwork in front of him without so much as a twinge. He had been trained to distinguish between good fiscal policy and bad, if only because Erebor had been so dependent on trade and any prince needed to have a solid grasp of money, but the lessons of his youth had been curiously short on child rearing hints and tips. "Nori Rison, isn't it?" he said.

 

            Nori bowed. "At your service."

 

            "At yours and your family's," Thorin responded automatically. "Please tell me where you found my nephews. And who they were fighting." He had a sudden thought. Fíli and Kíli were popular lads, and if they'd been somewhere busy when the fight broke out, somewhere frequented by other young dwarves of their age... "And if, to your knowledge, the fight is still going on."

 

            "It was shaping up to be a bit of a brawl," Nori acknowledged with a sideways grins. "Plenty of lads decided they'd pile in once they saw a fight was on. Dunno if they knew what it was about."

           

            "They weren't friends of ours," Kíli said helpfully.

 

            "Did they know who you were?"

 

            "Yeah, they did," Nori said, before either Kíli or Fíli could open their mouths. "'S why they picked the fight. It was a bunch of Ered Luin boys, the lads who've been here since long before anyone came from Erebor. They were holding a grudge, you know how some of them do, and they got a bit pissed and started talking about newcomers, and go back to your Lonely Mountain, not wanted here... You know, m'lord."

 

            Thorin nodded silently. He did know. Ered Luin had not been deserted when they came to it; there had been a small community, pockets of dwarves living on the edges of history and doing their best to maintain crumbling ancestral halls. At first, the dwarves of Erebor had been welcomed, as new hands to the beasts and cultivations, distant kin with tragic stories to swell the numbers of a fading community, and the dwarves of Erebor had behaved well in return, gratitude making them generous. They had travelled a long way, and a winding, dangerous road. To set one's belongings down, and know that one need not pick them up again - it was a gift. But there had been a few grumbles even then, complaints that there were too many newcomers, that they behaved ill, that they were stealing the stones of Ered Luin from under the feet of their rightful owners. Over the years, the complaints, though still rare, had grown. And Thorin especially was caught in the middle, a very visible symbol of everything that had been lost, and an easy, obvious target for the wrath of the original inhabitants of Ered Luin. He could almost recite the things that would have been said in Fíli and Kíli's hearing; coward, for not reclaiming the Lonely Mountain, cheat, for taking everything from the owners of Ered Luin, vagabond, for his wanderings.

 

            "And then they started in on you, and your lads objected, and the other lads threw the first punch."

 

            Thorin couldn't say he hadn't guessed. His gaze swung to Fíli and Kíli. Fíli's mouth twisted and set stubbornly, and Kíli burst out: "We couldn't just let them _say_ such things about you, Uncle -"

 

            Thorin cut him off with a gesture. "You have to," he said. "If you do not, it will only make it worse. They must have somewhere they can speak freely - and I am not lord of this land. We owe them much."

 

            "They owe you a lot, too," Fíli said, "Mam's told me what it was like when we came here."

 

His brother talked over him: "But you're a magistrate, you enforce the laws, everyone comes to you for help - what's that, if not -"

 

            Thorin met Nori's eyes, and registered an ironical look. He acknowledged it with a quirk of his mouth, then turned back to the boys. "I help to enforce the laws for ci- former citizens of Erebor because they are made in my family's name, and the name of the throne of Erebor. That's all. It is just that there are a lot more of us than there are of them, so Balin, and your mother, and yes, myself, sometimes, have a significant role." He tapped his fingers on his desk restlessly, dislodging some of the papers he'd been working with: carefully calculated trade figures for the markets of Ered Luin, and reports from the latest trade caravans returning to Ered Luin.

 

            Kíli and Fíli said nothing. Fíli looked worried; Kíli, curiously still and unusually serious.

 

            Thorin sighed, and thought better of a rant that began 'Your behaviour reflects on the entire house of Durin'. They'd heard it before; it would have no real impact, not right now. They were still so young; he would need to be stricter with them soon, but now, today... "Don't do it again, lads."

 

            "We didn't," Kíli started indignantly, and came to an abrupt halt when his brother kicked him.

 

            "Yes, uncle," Fíli said, and then stared hard at Kíli.

 

            "Yes, uncle," Kíli said, rather reluctantly.

 

            "Good," Thorin said. "You may go. Clean yourselves up before your mother finds out about this."

 

            His nephews disappeared, and Nori, after a quick bow, made to leave too.

 

            "Master Nori!" Thorin said, before he could get too far, and Nori paused and watched him.

 

            "I am in your debt," Thorin said. No doubt this would come back to haunt him, but there was no doubt that Nori had done him a considerable service, either.

 

            Nori regarded him inscrutably for a moment, and then produced a slightly rough-edged but surprisingly elegant bow - a bow to a sovereign king - before vanishing.

 

            Thorin's headache pounded.

 

***

 

            “It’s my father’s task, to give me my first axe,” Fíli said, staring at the axe Thorin had just placed in his hands.

 

            For lack of anything else to say, Thorin nodded. Fíli transferred that wide, blue-eyed stare from the axe to him for a moment, and Thorin stiffened his spine, so as not to squirm. There had been occasions, of course, when the role Thorin had slipped into in his nephews' lives - normally so carefully skirted around - was acknowledged. Kíli's ingenuous cry of "Da!", uttered once and never repeated, occasionally rang in Thorin's guilty ears. He was sure Víli would have done a better job of this; Thorin and Dís were too stern too much of the time, marked too deeply by grief and repeated loss, and Víli's sunniness and warmth would have been a welcome counterbalance.

 

            On the other hand, Víli had never been much of a weaponsmith. Thorin would probably have made his nephew's first adult-sized axe anyway.

 

            "Your father was a fine dwarf," Thorin said. "But not much of a smith. We were good friends; he might have asked me to do it regardless." He hesitated. "Do you remember much of him?"

 

            "A little. Enough." Fíli tested the weight of the axe in his hand.

 

            "I am sorry that you cannot know him more." Thorin watched Fíli, steady and serious, and looking so much Thorin's own father - a trick of the light, a hint of a familiar posture; Fíli was as blond as his father, and with his father's nose and broad brow, it was Kíli who was a Durin throwback, but suddenly there was something about Fíli, some old, old memory -

 

            Thorin coughed around the lump in his throat. "I trust it suits your height and reach. I had Dwalin advise me, but I suggest you try it for yourself."

 

            Fíli brushed a careful thumb over the edge of the axe, and it came away bloody. Thorin bit back an impulse to tell him to take more care; by anyone's standards, Fíli was now an adult. Young, yes, very young, but Thorin owed it to him to treat his actions with due seriousness. And then Fíli looked up, and Thorin recognised Thráin son of Thrór in the set of Fíli's jaw and the frown on his face. Thráin had disappeared long before Fíli's birth, Fíli had never known him, and yet there was the exact expression Thorin's father had worn to deliver solemn, perhaps unpalatable, news.

 

            Thorin's heart sank.

 

            "I am of age now," Fíli said.

 

            "Yes," Thorin agreed, and then, because he was Fíli's uncle, added "Just. And don't lord it over your brother."

 

            Fíli stifled a tiny smile. "He won't want an axe, anyway, tradition or not. He likes the bow best."

 

            "He is a very talented archer," Thorin agreed. "Like your father, who we were speaking of."

 

            Fíli nodded, and then his expression settled back to determined solemnity. "As I am grown - I should show you the respect of a dwarf to his liege as much as that of a nephew to his uncle."

 

            The formality in his voice was new, but Thorin's nephews' ability to reduce him to speechlessness was not. And yet the idea wasn't new either. Thorin, Dís, Balin, they had all worked to smarten the boys up in public, instil a little dignity along with a sense of responsibility, and Thorin himself - for all the speeches about representing the entire line of Dúrin he had not uttered, there were thousands that he had, and for all the times he had thought _one day I must be stricter with them, but not today_ , the boys must have known what he was thinking at least some of the time. Fíli had guessed: here was the proof of it.

           

            Thorin had looked and waited for a moment in which this would happen, but had not wanted it to. He valued Fíli's warmth as much as his sense, Kíli's mischief as much as his way with bow and arrow. He did not want to bury everything about his nephews that had always charmed him under formality - however much duty seemed to demand it. He had always known he was raising the heirs to the throne of Erebor, and that there was little and less space to let them simply be young, but he had not wanted to call an end to their childhoods.

 

            Fíli had taken the choice of a moment out of his hands.

 

            He inclined his head. "It is understood, Fíli." He laid his hands on Fíli's shoulders, and pressed his forehead against his nephew's. Fíli tensed for a moment, as if surprised - Thorin had often held his nephews when they were small, but not lately - then relaxed.

 

            "I am proud of you," Thorin added. "So would your father have been."

 

***

 

            “You can’t leave without us, Uncle,” Kíli said, the light of adventure bright in his eyes. “We won’t let you.”

 

            "Absolutely not," Thorin said firmly, feeling somewhat cornered. Justifiable, even if he was being cornered by a pair of half-grown dwarves, since they were now large hulking lads rather than the infants he had played with, and had backed him into a corner of his forge. "Out of the question."

 

            "It's our home too," Kíli said. His eyes, the same deep brown as Thorin's mother's and just as sparkling, shone with all the stories Thorin had ever told him about Erebor, and in them Thorin saw not the gold of the treasury or the glinting snow on the peaks but dragonfire on the lake.

 

            Thorin contemplated saying something like 'You have never lived there,' and then realised that he had always gone to such pains to tell the boys about their home far away, its beauties and splendours waiting to be reclaimed one day when the time was right, that if he now went back on that he would leave himself open to accusations of hypocrisy that he would not be able to bluster through.

 

            "I am _busy_ ," he said, to buy time. This had the advantage of being true; his name-day present to Dwalin this year was knocking out all the dents in the breastplate Thorin had made him last year, mementos of a wildly successful entry in a tourney at the Iron Hills. Whenever Dwalin tried to mend his own armour, he put just as many dents in as he hammered out. "This is delicate work."

 

            "No, it's not," Fíli said, eyeing up the breastplate. "I can do it while you're explaining to Kíli why he can't come."

 

            Thorin saw the trap coming. "Firstly: this is your Uncle Dwalin's name-day present, it is not fit that you should do the work for me. Secondly: you are not coming either, Fíli son of Víli, you are both _too young_."

 

            There was an immediate uproar.

 

            "Silence!" Thorin roared, which had some effect. "I have made my decision. Go and bother your mother, if you must complain."

 

            "Un-" Kíli began, in exasperated, whiny tones, and then cut himself off and replaced it with " _Thorin_ ," in an equally wheedling voice. He had reached the same age Fíli had been when he had stopped calling Thorin 'uncle', and was now training himself to do the same, because Mahal forbid that Fíli should ever outdo him.

 

            Thorin had made him an axe after all. It was a more traditional choice than the bow Kíli really wanted would have been, but Kíli did need a decent axe, and he was a fine bowyer in his own right, these days; there was no sense in commissioning from someone else that which Kíli could make better. Kíli had even been seen to use the axe, which was slightly more than Thorin had expected. Fíli carried his axe frequently, but Fíli favoured the axe almost as much as he did the sword, and Kíli wouldn't have been the first dwarf to treasure such a gift, but never use it.

 

            "I am not taking you with me," Thorin said with finality, and when the boys refused to budge he heaved a sigh and explained. "This will not be a grand homecoming, or a great expedition with hope and money behind it. If it were, do you really think you would have had to eavesdrop like a pair of sneaks to hear about it?" He glared at his nephews. Kíli looked slightly abashed. Fíli looked like he was working up to a speech in which eavesdropping would somehow become a great and noble thing to do, an act of loyalty, because otherwise how could he help Thorin?

 

            "I do not think you understand," Thorin carried on. "I have ten companions. That is all. We are well outfitted. Some few are great names. But we have no reinforcements. No army. There is some slight chance that when I speak to the Council next week - but I doubt it. I have already spoken to Dáin. He will not back me."

 

            " _Dáin_ will not back you?" Fíli exclaimed, surprise written all over his face. Thorin knew why: Dáin had ever been a loyal friend to the dwarves of Erebor in general and Thorin and his family in particular.

 

            "Not for so faint a hope." Thorin sighed. He also knew why Dáin would not support his expedition, and part of Thorin understood - not well enough to have avoided an explosion of temper, not at the time, but enforced calm made him see that Dáin had his reasons. They weren't even bad reasons. "Still. I will not let this chance go."

 

            _I cannot_ , he did not say aloud, but he thought they knew what he wasn't saying. Not from personal experience, of course, but they had grown up around resigned sighs, longing gaps in conversation, drunken stories of old days, and holes in families where mothers and uncles and grandmothers ought to be. They knew well enough the pull the Lonely Mountain exerted on those who had known it and lost it so spectacularly.

 

            "This is not your fight," Thorin said finally, attempting to imbue his voice with authority without actually saying 'I forbid it', words that long and painful experience had taught him were grossly counterproductive. "I will not risk my heirs' lives on such a slim chance."

 

            Kíli looked as if he was about to say something, but then glanced at his brother and closed his mouth.

 

            "We understand," Fíli said, and Kíli nodded.

 

            Thorin watched them go suspiciously, a leaden certainty in the pit of his stomach. He was sure he hadn't heard the last of this.

 

***

 

            “I have made mistakes,” Thorin said heavily. “And I think the greatest was bringing you with me.”

 

            "You did try to leave us behind," Kíli offered, but his normal bright grin was a narrow slice of itself. He'd never seen real battle; neither had Fíli. Guilt wrapped Thorin round. He had done a great deal to lose their trust in the last few days, and yet they offered it still - and yet -

 

            "Rather this than waiting back with Mam," Fíli said, and hesitated. "Uncle."

 

            Thorin closed his eyes. "At least stay close to Dwalin. He will keep you safe."

 

            "We'll stay close to you," Fíli said.

 

            "We couldn't have let you go without us," Kíli said. "We're not going to let you go without us now."

 

            Fíli's broad-palmed hand landed on Thorin's shoulder. "You taught us better than to flinch, Uncle Thorin."

 

            Thorin opened his eyes, and saw his nephews grown. "Yes," he said heavily. "Yes. I did."


End file.
